In addition, I noticed that one of the group’s administrators grew up in the Boston neighborhood in which I currently reside. I fired off a quick message. Within two hours I was banned from the group and a few minutes ago I received the following message from the administrator.

Re: you living in my old neighborhood. Yes, I grew up in ——-. Though I had a public school education, I was fortunate enough to live in a time before “political correctness” took over. My first grade teacher, Miss ——-, taught the righteousness of the OVERALL Southern Cause & that 95% of the men who fought for the Confederacy did so to fight against Federal Government Tyranny over their lives, heavy tariffs & for States Rights & NOT for keeping slavery because they didn’t own any. But many Unionist States, their political & military leaders did still own slaves which was why Lincoln only freed the slaves in “…those states which are in rebellion…” meaning the Southern States of the Confederacy. States which had formed their own separate nation that he (Lincoln) had no control over.

The Emancipation Proclamation (EP) had no force of Law behind it & if it did, many of his own generals, like Grant, would have refused to obey such an order. Grant even said so. Grant’s wife (in Ohio) owned 2 slaves. The EP was a military tactic only; intended to embolden slaves in the South to RISE UP in “savage rebellion” against their Masters & with all the men gone, force those men to abandon their posts & return home by the tens of thousands to defend their families from the ravages of the slave rebellion. The anticipated rebellion never occurred as the slaves were not being brutalized by their master as was charged by the abolitionists. But rather were treated like family. It’s too bad that you & millions more like you, yes even in the South have not been taught to be “free thinkers” & have bought into the propaganda of Academia & the mainstream news media that the war was fought to free the slaves who were being brutalized by their harsh southern task masters. My mother taught me to be a free thinker – God rest her soul. My teachers in the Boston public schools of the 1950’s thru early 1970’s especially during the Centennial celebrations of the War for Southern Independence taught us about the War Criminal Sherman & his War on Southern civilians during his March to the Sea through Mississippi, Alabama & Georgia while the gentleman General Robert E. Lee alternatively issued orders that NO military actions by his troops EVER be taken that would desolate Northern civilians or their properties during his several military excursions into Union states.

Your negative views on the Confederacy have earned your exclusion from the “Black Confederates” group. It’s too bad that you have allowed yourself to succumb to politically correct thinking prevalent in society today, rather than be that “Free Thinker” that Boston historically was so famous for prior to the current modern “Age of Enlightenment & Permissiveness”. We may be from the same area of the country, but we are NOT alike in any way.

I am sharing this message for a few reasons. First, I have to admit to being surprised by what some Boston students were taught about the Civil War not too long ago. More importantly, this response confirms that this debate really has little to do with whether black men fought as soldiers in the Confederate army. I completely understand why they banned me from this page.

Don’t sweat it, Dr. Levin. At least you managed to make two comments on that page. I’ve been banned from a score of neo-Confederate pages after only one comment. I’ve all but given up even attempting to reach those Confederate apologists. If they wish to remain willfully and blissfully ignorant, more power to ’em, I guess…

How about that? Banned for telling the truth and using facts. Naturally, that doesn’t fit in with right wing extremists and their fantasies. These neo-confederates are just flat out ignorant. Ask them for some proof and they come up with the craziest stuff you can think of. When that gets proven wrong they just keep lying to support their fantasies.

I suppose you could go in under a pseudonym. His response to what his teacher taught made me wonder if his teacher might have been a member of the UDC or, at the very least, descended from the Southern Society of Boston. Too much assumption/conjecture and not enough fact in his lengthy reply. But I guess you’re used to that.

When, oh when, are these neo-confederates going to realize that THEY are in fact the victims of revisionist history (the Lost Cause). Answer–probably never. Pretty funny that a self-proclaimed “free thinker” has allowed his mind to be closed his entire life by something he learned from a FIRST GRADE teacher that spouted out the revisionist history of the Lost Cause.

Is there any truth to the individual’s recollection of what was taught in the Boston school system at that time? I grew up in California and remember riots and protests in certain areas of Boston toward integration of the school system. What the correspondent wrote has a definite racial bias. Bigotry knows no geography.

The education this person received from the late 1950s to the early 1970s seems to validate the anti-Black racism Boston has unfortunately been known for. I don’t know how such an education found its way into the public schools of the place that was once known for abolitionism but I’ve seen some of the images of resistance to busing, including a somewhat famous photo of a group of White men attacking a Black man with an American flag. So if this person’s recollection of the glorification of the Confederacy in the public school system is true, it all ties together. Very sad.

Another tactic on Confederate pages might be satirical irony by posting increasingly extreme caricatures of their take on history. See how far you can go until it becomes too much for even them and they don’t know whether to laugh or cry. You might get more posts across and sow division among ’em along the way.

From the looks of the page, they are light on black confederates and heavy on the confederacy and the “crimes” of the North in “the war of Northern aggression”. I have never liked the idea that my ancestors were traitors either but I will not indulge in fantasy to make them heroes as these folks are doing.

It’s your standard FB page devoted to these subjects. Stories about black Confederates sit alongside posts that attempt to vindicate the Confederate cause. As I’ve said all along, that is what this narrative is designed to accomplish.

Kevin,
I love the phrase “propaganda of Academia” that this fellow uses in his response, does this mean that you are educated? That’s a no-no when it comes to the neo-confederates.
Recently I was called ignorant by George Purvis on his blog because of a comment I made to Al Mackey. I took it as a compliment.
Keep up the good work.

Also, there’s really no excuse for anyone in the online CW community not to know who you are. This is probably the most well-known CW blog on the Internet. I find it hilarious they actually let you join in the first place.

I appreciate it, but this has nothing to do with being a Southerner. The author of this letter was born and raised in Boston and currently lives in Maine.

To be completely honest, I anticipated being banned once I left the responses. My initial goal was to join and simply observe for purposes of research, but to see some of these posts go unanswered proved to be too much.

Speaks to the willingness to share ideas and accept/receive critique, huh? Academics (in the hopes of not seeming elitist) typically present their arguments at conferences to receive criticism. They publish in academic, peer reviewed journals which will are analyzed by the academic community. I’m simply amazed at the arguments made by certain proponents of Black Confederates, or even the hold-outs on the “Lost Cause” narrative, that offer pseudo-evidence without any support from primary sources. When the lack of evidence is pointed out, the response is much like what you received. Smh. :/

Kevin, I so love your blog. I keep mentioning it to my fellow CW buffs at our Greater Orlando Civil War Roundtable, but our membership is aging and if they are not southern folk, then they are just too polite to be contrary to those who are. So I try to get a discussion going about black Confederate soldiers and they smile with blank faces and say nothing. It’s frustrating, to say the least.
As a local musician in Florida for decades (bars, mostly), and as a CW history lover who spreads the love, I used to be asked “oh, are you a Yank or a Reb?”. It gave me the smack down opportunity to say, “I’m an American. That’s all. Our history is important.”
There are so many things wrong with what this guy said, but something stuck out to me.
I am a secular humanist (because I actually read the bible!) and he said, “My mother taught me to be a free thinker – God rest her soul.” Oxymoron…

I have a noticed a tendency among some to define “free thinker” as simply being contrary. That seems to be the case here. You also see it among those who like conspiracy theories. “The ‘official story’ says x, therefor I shall say Not-X!” It’s not a case of following the evidence, but of demonstrating by disagreeing that one is not a “sheeple.”

>>>> Sherman & his War on Southern civilians during his March to the Sea through Mississippi, Alabama & Georgia

Yeah, the guy was really up on his Civil War history. I guess Sherman has some faulty maps if he left Atlanta wanting to head to the sea at Savannah and ended up going through Mississippi and Alabama. How the heck did the Federals ever win? LOL!!

I was banned from a similar group clinging to the Lost Cause for dear life because I had the audacity to point out that in a letter Mary Custis Lee wrote in 1866 about government “tyranny” was in fact a pronouncement of her racism in the fact that she singled out Benjamin Butler, Charles Sumner, and Thaddeus Stevens specifically for being tyrants.

All I did was point out that the only common “tyrannical” link shared between the three men was there roles in abolishing the institution of slavery. Butler started the movement to Emancipation during the war by accepting runaway slaves into his army’s camp early in the war. Charles Sumner was caned on the floor of Congress for expressing his views on slavery and abolition, and Thaddeus Stevens was the leader of the Radical Republicans in Congress responsible for passing the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.

Sounds like a good debate. Anyway to hold a radio debate instead of typing? I believe in the Southern Cause and would love to debate the issue on radio or if you’re in New York to hold the debate at a hotel in the city.